“Your Everything to Me”
In the front is the famous totem pole in Seattle’s Pioneer Square.
Turn it over.
My father wrote:
“Your everything to me.”
These few words tell me something that military records, census documents, newspaper articles and official family records never could.
They allow me to hear my father’s voice.
Before my parents became husband and wife, before they created a home together, and long before they became my parents, they were Roger and Mary. Two young people trying to maintain a relationship while war kept them apart.
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Searching for His Next Chapter
As I continue sorting through the papers my parents left behind, I am discovering that many of them are more than old documents. They are snapshots of lives in transition. They capture moments when the future was uncertain, when important decisions had not yet been made, and when my parents could not possibly have known […]
“Wish You Were Here”
Another photograph shows the Seattle waterfront and a streamlined passenger vessel. Turn it over and there is another message: “Wish you were here.” It is such a familiar postcard phrase, but in the context of their lives, it means something more. My father wasn’t on vacation. He was in the service. Mary was thousands of […]
Envelopes from 1937
There is a different address that appears on several envelopes in the fall of 1937, all addressed to my father in Martinsburg, WV. He would have been just about seventeen at the time. I am puzzled by the address. These envelopes were not sent to his mother’s home. Instead, they carry a different street in […]
